Scott Bradley: 'A Law For Everything?'

Source:Scott Bradley- Not in a free society. 

“After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Facebook Live Thursdays at 7:00 PM MST on: To Preserve the Nation

Scott’s Website:Freedoms Rising Sun."

From Scott Bradley

I actually like this piece from Scott Bradley (and I don’t mean to be insulting here) but I had him pegged as someone who was more of a Christian-Conservative and not just that but a Christian-Theocrat or Christian-Nationalist who did believe that it was the role of government to not just legislate morality, but to legislate and enforce laws based on fundamentalist religious scripture. So things like alcohol and premarital sex, adultery, along with homosexuality, and gambling would all be illegal in a theocracy and that form of government.

But what Bradley is doing here instead is saying that something might be wrong or immoral and not God’s will, but doesn’t mean it should automatically be illegal.

Alcohol is obviously bad for people especially if it’s abused, but that alone doesn’t mean it should be illegal. And the same thing with gambling, adultery. (To use as examples) There’s nothing necessarily wrong with premarital sex, but it does violate some people’s religious beliefs, but that alone doesn’t mean it should be illegal. Which I guess is what Scott Bradley’s point would be here.

The great political humorist P.J. O’Rourke once said that he’s very socially conservative in the sense as far as how he lives, but he doesn’t believe that government shouldn’t force everyone to live like him, just because his own personal lifestyle is pretty conservative.

Me personally, I don’t drink alcohol let alone smoke tobacco and I don’t gamble, but I would never want government to force other people to make the same decisions that I’ve made here, especially since they’re not hurting anyone else simply by having a drink or smoking a cigarette or gambling their paycheck.

I believe if you’re going to have to free society there are certain things and activities that government simply has to put up with in order to protect the freedoms of that society. Including behavior and activities that come with real risk that I’ve already mentioned and even more like marijuana and even prostitution and pornography. And that government should come in when people are hurting innocent people with the choices that they’re making.

It’s not a question of whether government should legislate morality or not since that question is already moot anyway. But the real question is to what extent and I want government to protract me and every other innocent person from predators, but not try to protect us from ourselves; Which is where I come down as a Liberal. 

You can also see this post at The FreeState, on WordPress.

Scott Bradley: 'Should We Try To Legislate Morality?'

Source:Freedoms Rising Sun- Moot question.

“Should We Try to Legislate Morality?"

From Scott Bradley

To answer Scott Bradley's question: no we should not try to legislate morality. At least when it comes to personal behavior and how free adults conduct themselves in their personal lives.

Source:Merion West- People protesting against alcohol prohibition 

It's sort of a moot question anyway because every civilized country in the world with a functioning government whether it's a developed country or developing country, legislates morality at least in the sense that it lays the rules for how people can interact with each other. To put it simply, we're not allowed to hurt innocent people. We're not allowed to rape each other, physically attack each other, steal from each other murder each other, kidnap each other, commit fraud against each other. We're not allowed to commit these acts and other dangerous acts against innocent people and if we do we face steep legal consequences for doing these things. Which is why we have jails and prisons because we have people who hurt innocent people everyday and have to pay a justifiable price for them.

Source:Faithful Thinkers- Religious of Freedom, but not theocracy 

But that's not my main interest here anyway, because I'm more interested in what government's role if any is when it comes to how people conduct themselves in their personal lives. I'm not talking about people hurting innocent people, but I'm not talking about who people act and do with their own lives and conduct themselves in their personal lives and how much freedom should we have in our own lives. When people can have sex, what we can eat and drink, smoke, the types of entertainment that we can listen to and watch, what we can do with our own bodies and what we can put into our own bodies.

Government already legislates morality and I think Scott Bradley is at least smart enough understand that at least, if he doesn't already know that. The real question is to what extent and should we remain liberal democratic republic or not where personal freedom and autonomy is vast, even if some of our personal choices and activities offends others religious and cultural values. Or do we want big government coming in and telling us who we can have sex with, when we can have sex, who we can marry, what we can put into out bodies, do in the privacy of our own homes and tells us this is what moral and what's not based on some religious and moral code. And even if what we're doing is not actually hurting anyone, it still has to be illegal, because it's immoral according some people's religious and moral values.

And as a Liberal myself I believe it's not the job of government to try to protect us from ourselves, but to protect innocent people from predators and predatory behavior. And as long as people aren't hurting innocent people with what they're doing, government should stay out of the way and allow for free adults to live their own lives and deal with the consequences of their own decisions. Instead of big government coming in and telling us what we should believe and how we should think and this is how we should live our own personal lives.

You can also see this post at The FreeState, on WordPress.  

You can also see this post at The FreeState, on Blogger.

The Independent Institute: Kyle Swan- 'Private Property Rights'

Source:The Independent Institute- Thank you, Kyle Swan!

"Professor Kyle Swan talks about private property rights at the 2016 Challenge of Liberty Summer Seminar held in Santa Clara, California." 

From The Independent Institute

Libertarian Economist Walter Williams once said something that I actually agree with, he was talking about property rights and extended them to one's self and one's body, that the individual has complete control of their own body and therefor gets to decide what's done with their body. What they can eat, what they can drink, what they can smoke, even who they can have consensually have sex with. Even if the sex is homosexual sex, taking money to have sex with someone else in a consensual way.

Property rights is not just about money and material wealth, but about how we can spend our own money short of using our money to have someone beat up or murdered, or spending our money in order to have something stolen from someone else. And that includes spending our money to gamble even at casinos or private card games. (To use as examples) That private property rights just doesn't cover one's home, or car, or personal possessions, like a business that they may own. But ourselves as individuals and our own bodies. Short of hurting an innocent person with our body or other property like money.

This is really the main difference between a liberal democracy like America with guaranteed constitutional and individual rights that include property rights as I just mentioned and living in a Marxist-Communist state like North Korea (to use as an example) where individualism is essentially outlawed. Where the state (meaning the national government) owns everything in society. Including where the people live and work, even shop.

Even social democracies like Britain that are very socialist as far as how their national government and economy works, have a high degree of property rights in their country. They just aren't guaranteed especially under a constitutional system which is what we have in America. Property rights are the rights for individuals to control and operate what they actually own including their own bodies.

Our property rights are guaranteed in America under both the Fourth and Fifth amendment's in the Constitution. That can't be interfered with by the state (meaning government) without probable cause. That the state views what someone is doing as a threat to bodily harm or financial harm to an innocent person. 

I'm not talking about an anarcho state (meaning anarchy) where everyone can essentially do whatever they want including hurting innocent people. And then it's left up to the victim to decide what should happen to their predator and left up to the victim to inflict whatever consequences on their predator.

What I'm talking about a federal republic in the form of a liberal democracy where property rights including to one's self are guaranteed short of hurting innocent people with our property. 

As much as so-called Progressives in America today (Socialists in reality) complain about property rights, private property, and individualism in America and that too much in their view is left up to the individual to decide how they should live, they take advantage of our property rights and free speech everyday. And you can say the same thing about the Christian-Right in America but their complaints about our property rights tend to be more about our personal freedom and our freedom to make our own lifestyle choices, instead of our economic freedom.

But that's just one thing that is great about America that one doesn't even have to believe in property rights and either personal or economic freedoms, or either of them in order to take advantage of them and live with them. People who don't believe in free speech (just one property right) can use their First Amendment rights to make the case why censorship is necessary to outlaw speech that they disagree with and that offends them.

Because the censors whether they are political correctness warriors or Christian-Conservatives who are offended by certain forms of entertainment, have the same free speech rights as people who believe in free speech. Who are free speech nuts like myself (to borrow a phrase from Kirsten Powers and Jeffrey Lord) Just as long as we're not using our free speech rights to incite violence or irresponsibly libel innocent people. That property rights extend to everyone including people who don't believe in them. 

You can also see this post at The Daily Times, on Blogger.

Lyle Denniston: 'Where Do Abortion Rights Go From Here?'

Source:National Constitution Center- U.S. Justice Anthony Kennedy.

“The state, I think, is going to talk about the remaining clinics.  Would it be (a) proper, and (b) helpful, for this Court to remand for further findings on clinic capacity?...Suppose there were evidence that there was a capacity and a capability to build these kinds of clinics [that would satisfy Texas law], would that be of importance?”

“Do you think the district court would have had discretion to say we’re going to stay this requirement for two-and-a-half, three years, to see if the capacity problem can be cured?”

—Separate questions asked by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy during the Supreme Court’s hearing Wednesday on the constitutionality of a 2013 Texas law that imposed new restrictions on how abortion clinics were to be structured and operated.  Kennedy appeared to be focusing mainly on what would happen to existing clinics in Texas if the court were to uphold those new restrictions, and, in particular, whether they could handle the demand for some 70,000 abortions a year in the state.

WE CHECKED THE CONSTITUTION, AND…

In the Supreme Court’s rulings on abortion going back to Roe v. Wade 43 years ago, the Justices have never attempted to calculate how many abortion clinics were needed in a given state to serve women’s decisions to seek an end to their pregnancies.  But they appear to have at least hinted that, if the number falls far short of the capacity needed to make sure that the right to an abortion remains secure in that state, that may result in a constitutional violation.

This is a kind of predictive numbers game that the court does not have the research staff to try to work out, but the Justices may be on the verge of launching such an inquiry in lower courts.  The court was pondering that possibility on Wednesday, as it held its first significant abortion hearing in nine years.  If it takes that step, suggested by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy (who appeared to be holding the key vote), the scope of abortion rights may not be clarified for a couple of more years.  This constitutional right might thus be in a kind of limbo in the meantime.

The new case examined by the court, Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, does get into the question of the numbers of available clinics because one of the more recent tactics of state legislatures seeking to reduce the number of abortions in America has been to adopt strict clinic regulations that clinics contend they cannot afford to satisfy and still stay open.  The legislatures have adopted such measures on the premise that they are necessary to protect women’s health, but the clinics and doctors have been challenging them on the premise that they are merely anti-abortion laws in a protective disguise.

In Texas, the legislature in 2013 adopted a requirement that any clinic performing abortions must upgrade its facilities to equal those of a surgical center.  The clinics have argued that it could cost more than $2 million to upgrade in that way, and so the effect is to shut them down.  The Texas law also includes a requirement that any doctor performing abortions must have the professional privilege of sending patients to a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic.  That, too, was under review on Wednesday, but Justice Kennedy, in particular, seemed to be focusing mainly on the surgical requirement, as potentially the most demanding.

Several members of the court appeared to be troubled that the lower court proceedings in this case did not produce enough hard evidence of why clinics that have closed did so, and what the likely impact on others would be if the court were to uphold one or both of the 2013 restrictions.

This, for Kennedy, became a question of capacity should the number of clinics be significantly reduced because of the new law.  In response to one of his questions about that, Kennedy was told by a federal government lawyer, U.S. Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr. (on hand to support the clinics’ challenge), that the clinics that would be able to satisfy the law and thus stay open could only perform about 14,000 abortions a year, when the annual demand for abortions in Texas is somewhere around 70,000.  “I really think this is the key,” Verrilli added, “because I do think this is the locus of the substantial obstacle [to Texas women’s abortion rights].”

Were the court to follow Kennedy’s suggestion that the data on prospective clinic closures be gathered with the case returning to lower courts, it would give this eight-member court (now without the late Justice Antonin Scalia) with a way to avoid splitting four-to-four on the constitutionality of the Texas law.  The court does not like to divide evenly, especially on a major case, because that essentially accomplishes nothing.   So, as the Justices begin discussing at a Friday morning closed-door conference what to do with the Texas case, the option of returning it for further development in lower court proceedings surely will come up.

It was more than obvious, throughout the hour-long hearing, that there are three Justices who very likely would vote to uphold the Texas law, and four who very likely would vote to strike it down.  That, of course, would leave the controlling vote with the eighth Justice, Kennedy.  He was the only one whose strong leanings were not clearly evident during the hearing, which ran for nearly a half-hour longer than had been scheduled.

The court will next meet in public next Monday morning, to announce action on pending cases.  Although it may be too early for the Justices to have made up their minds about where to go with abortion law, it is not out of the question that there could be something to announce on Monday.

If the court is not able to compose a definitive ruling now on the Texas restrictions, the issue is surely likely to arise in cases from other states.  Whether or not the court by then will have a full bench of nine Justices remains uncertain.

Source:National Constitution Center

"The U.S. Supreme Court today took up the most important abortion case in 25 years. Here’s what’s at stake."

Source:NBC News- at SCOTUS

From NBC News

I thought on this beautiful warm morning in the nation’s capital (the capital of the free world) that I would write about something as unifying as abortion. Where there’s such an absolute consensus, arguing against it is like arguing in favor of slavery or something. (Ha, ha!) 

But to be serious, I’ve always find it ironic that a state like Texas which claims to be so pro-life, consistently leads the nation in state killings. And the most uninsured and with high crime rates and not just in Houston and San Antonio and everything else. I mean, I understand the mainstream pro-life position on abortion. It’s the other stuff that puzzles me. I would think anyway that a state that claims to be pro-life wouldn’t lead the nation in death penalties. But maybe that’s just too much common sense for the average American, or something.

As far as the Texas abortion case: If you try to shut down health clinics, because they perform abortions, you’re violating Roe V Wade. Because you’re essentially saying that women can’t get an abortion in your state. And you might say they could go to their local hospital. But a lot of Americans especially in Texas perhaps, live far away from hospitals and rely on local clinics for their health care. The neighborhood doctor. (If you will) Or say women can’t get an abortion after a certain period of time. You’re still violating Roe V Wade. 

With this Texas abortion law, putting the state’s view over the individual and saying the state knows best what health care people should have and when they should get it. States that claim to be anti-big government, shouldn’t be promoting it and telling their people what they can do with their bodies.

To sound a bit more positive, if I was even offering free advice and no I’m not a charity, but if I had free advice for the anti-abortion movement, (I hate the term pro-life when it comes to abortion) I would suggest they become more consistent and positive on this issue. And then if they offered to pay me for my advice I would layout several steps for them to take. But if you want to hear it anyway. I would say people who claim to be pro-life, should be against the death penalty. Be against abortion with exceptions for life and health of the mother, if you believe fetus’s are babies and therefore alive and deserving of the same Right to Life as people. You say that the state should never promote killings, except and only as a last resort to defend the public. Lethal force to defend the public as a last resort, but if you have the murderer in prison for life, you’ve already removed that threat to the public.

My positive message for the anti-abortion movement would be yes, you’re anti-abortion, but you’re also pro-life. So you’re promoting adoption and quality parenting for all. Quality education for all. And anti-poverty agenda that promotes economic freedom for low-income parents and school choice for their kids. You’re acknowledging the obvious (without stating it) that you don’t have the political power to outlaw abortion, so you offer an alternative instead. And get the message out that their options for women to take when they have unwanted pregnancies. Like adoption and for low-income women to self-improve and get the skills they need to be successful in life. Instead of passing laws that might look great in your state, but then get thrown out later on simply because they’re unconstitutional.

As far as abortion rights and reproductive rights in the future, we now no longer have 5-4 pro-choice position on abortion on the Supreme Court, but a 5-3. And most likely thanks to the Democratic Christmas gift known as Donald Trump, the next U.S. Justice will also be a Liberal. So whether the anti-abortion movement like it or not and you can pretty much put the nail in the coffin that they will hate this reality, they’ll probably be stuck with abortion for at least another generation. 

So again if I’m offering advice (free or otherwise) to the anti-abortion movement, I’m saying you need a positive alternative here that can actually become law. Trying to almost completely outlaw abortion if not completely do it (if you are Governor Scott Walker) is not in the cards right now. So get involved in
liberal democratic marketplace of ideas and tell American women they have other options here.

Young Americans For Liberty: Thomas Sowell on Freedom of Choice

Freedom of Choice and personal and economic freedom in general is just that. The freedom to decide what is best for yourself. Not what is best for others. Not the freedom to hurt people other than in self-defense, but the freedom for one to make their own decisions and have the personal responsibility to live with the consequences of their decisions. To consume alcohol or not, to smoke tobacco or not, to even use marijuana or not, to marry or not and the same things for gays. The freedom to gamble one's own money or not. The freedom to watch an adult film or not. The freedom to read adult material and listen to graphic music and watch graphic entertainment or not. Not the freedom to make these decisions for others, because you approve of them. Ot to deny others from making these decisions for themselves, because you don't approve of them.

If there is a free market and of course there isn't and I've argued this a lot in the past, but if there were a free market it would be an individual market based on choice. Where we can all make these decisions for ourselves and then be held responsible for the decisions that we make. A free market of individuals, not a market of business's that would go unregulated and untaxed with the freedom over our own lives as far as what we consume, because even if there are a lot of different products, there would be very few competitors, because of all the unregulated monopolization in the market. But a true individual market where all free adults make these decisions themselves with a wide-range of different business's and competitors, because monopoly is truly illegal. With an educated public that has all the information that they need to make their own decisions.

Freedom of Choice is always something that I believe in as a Liberal. Because that along with Freedom of Speech and equality opportunity and equal rights and justice for all, is really what liberalism is about. I don't want to force people to make the same decisions that I did. Or be held responsible for the decisions that I made. I just want the freedom to make my own decisions and given the responsibility to personally live up to the consequences of my decisions. Not eliminate government and get it out-of-the-way all together. We still need a regulator to regulate how people interact with each other and to punish when the innocent are harmed. But let people make their own personal decisions short of hurting innocent people and hold them personally responsible for their own decisions.

Sheldon Richman: 'Planned Parenthood, Social Peace, And the Libertarian Approach'

Source:I Stand With PP- pro-Planned Parenthood supporters. (If I had to guess)

"The controversy raging over Planned Parenthood is one of the most acrimonious public discussions in recent memory. While the immediate issue concerns the disposition of fetal tissue after abortion (pregnant women can have tissue donated for medical research), the controversy taps into the more basic, and highly charged, conflict between defenders of women's reproductive rights -- the right to choose an abortion -- and defenders of unborn children's right to life. But my purpose here is not to settle that conflict...

From Free Association 

"The President of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards, spoke to the House Oversight and Reform Committee, and during the hearing she defended Planned Parenthood making clear that the recent videos released were fraudulent and not indicative of the organization’s actions. Republican congressman Jason Chaffetz challenged Richards with a graph that showed abortions exceeding cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood. The information on the slide seemed, at the very least, misleading. Ana Kasparian (The Point) and Ben Mankiewicz (What The Flick?!) hosts of The Young Turks discuss.

Do you think Richards did a good job defending Planned Parenthood? Will Chaffetz’s slide convince people that Planned Parenthood is an abortion factory? Let us know in the comments below... 

Source:The Young Turks- Cecile Richards: President of Planned Parenthood.

From The Young Turks

This is going to sound strange coming from a Liberal, but I’m going to make a fiscally conservative, perhaps even classically liberal case for publicly funding Planned Parenthood. 

Planned Parenthood serves low-income mothers and women who otherwise would have a very difficult time getting birth control and other women’s health care. Do people who call themselves Conservatives really want low-income women having more kids while they’re still collecting public assistance? 

Birth control is pro-life, because it prevents future Americans from having to live in poverty. Living with a single mother without the education and resources to raise their kids properly. Planned Parenthood is pro-life, because it provides millions of Americans with health care that they probably wouldn’t be able to get.

Tax-payer funding of Planned Parenthood means the Federal Government doesn’t have to create some new Federal agency to provide the health care to millions of American women who probably couldn’t get it anywhere else. 

Planned Parenthood means a smaller Federal Government, fewer Federal workers, less Federal tax dollars being spent on these services, because they’re not being provided by the Federal Government instead. 

We’re not talking about taxpayer funding of abortions which are illegal anyway and I support that except as Sheldon Richman put it under extreme circumstances. Like going through the pregnancy would kill the mother. What we’re talking about is health care not including abortions for millions of American women who probably couldn’t get it otherwise.

I know the libertarian argument about this is not government’s business and that they should butt out of what goes on in the private sector. But tell me where does that system exist in the world so I could look at that and see how it works. 

If you don’t have government serving people and seeing to it that people who might not be able to get by without that assistance gets help that they need, then what is government for. What’s the point of having a public sector at all? 

Government is supposed to serve the people. Not direct them, but to see to it that we all have a good shot at making it in life on our own. And preventing unwanted pregnancies and women from having to raise their kids in poverty, is part of that public service.

You can also see this post on WordPress.

Reason Magazine: Elizabeth Nolan Brown: Vice President Joe Biden Bashes Abortion, Defends Religious Freedom

Source:Reason

I have a problem with Vice President Biden’s I guess latest position on abortion saying that abortion is not only always wrong, but then life starts at conception. Meaning when the mother of the fetus is actually pregnant. If he was anti-choice on abortion all together, I wouldn’t have a problem with this position. But I think someone who says life starts at conception, but is still in favor of choice when it comes to abortion, is essentially saying that women have a right to murder their babies. If you believe that life starts at conception then how could also you believe in choice when it comes to abortion and not be in favor of murder at least on a limited basis. I can understand why an Irish-Catholic like Joe Biden would want to appeal to Democrats if he runs for president. But this is not how you do it.

Joe Biden’s entire 36 year career in the U.S. Senate which is also his whole Congressional career he was pro-choice on abortion. By the way his first year in the Senate 1973 is when Roe V. Wade was also decided that gave American women the right to decide for themselves whether to complete their pregnancies, or end them on their own. Then Senator Biden always argued that reproductive rights and the right to choose on abortion was always been between the women and the doctor. That this was not up to government to interfere in these most personal of decisions. Which is my position as well just as long as women are paying for this choice and not putting the cost of these decisions on the backs of taxpayers . But I don’t take that position, because I believe abortion is murder and that I believe women, or men have that right.

It seems to me at the very least that if you’re position on abortion is that you’re pro-choice, then you take that position because you don’t believe that life starts at conception. Whether you’re Catholic, or come from any other faith, or don’t practice religion at all. That life starts at the very least towards the end of pregnancies which is why you would be against what is called partial-birth abortion. Or life starts at birth. So of you take that position you’re not saying that women have the right to murder their babies, because you believe a fetus doesn’t become a baby until it’s actually born. But if you say, “of course life starts at conception, but so what this is the women’s decision and if she wants to murder her baby by aborting it, that’s her choice.” A position like that would be hard to defend.

TIME: Charlotte Alter-Sex Buyers: Why Cops Across the U.S. Target Men Who Buy Prostitutes

Source: TIME Magazine-

Source: TIME: Charlotte Alter-Sex Buyers: Why Cops Across the U.S. Target Men Who Buy Prostitutes

I guess what Cook County, Illinois is doing by arresting johns, that is men who pay prostitutes for sex, is better than arresting both johns and the prostitutes. And getting the prostitutes off the streets and giving them opportunities to improve their lives by getting out of prostitution and staying out of jail. The problem, is you’re still arresting johns. And for what, paying women for doing their job. Which is to give johns a good time and even sex. You’re arresting john for participating in a consensual act. And even if the consensual act is dangerous, its still consensual. Between two parties.

Illegal and criminal, are two different things at least to me. Doing something illegal means you’re breaking the law. You ran a red light, parked in a handicapped zone, failed to signal a turn and there are many other examples. But criminal, is when you intentionally hurt someone and do something that is not only illegal, but its criminal. You stole someone’s money, you beat an innocent person up, you raped someone, you murdered someone and you can go down the line. Good reasons why these acts are not just illegal, but criminal as well.

Prostitution, of course is illegal in most places and always has, but we’re talking about something where two agreeing parties agreed to do this with each other. And where the prostitute makes money from this simply by doing her job. And I understand everything about the dangers that come with the prostitution business is, which is exactly what it is a business. But you can say that about a lot other business’s that are legal in many places. Pro sports, gambling, private detective work, bounty hunting, stunt work and even acting. And yet these business’s are made as safe as they possibly can legal and otherwise through regulation. These industries actually regulate themselves.

Is prostitution the sole reason why we have two-million people in the criminal justice system in America as offenders? Of course not, but a big reason why we have so many convicted offenders in our system is because we arrest and lock people up who haven’t hurt anyone. In many cases these offenders are in jail, or prison for committing acts that are technically illegal and dangerous. Prostitution, is obviously one of those business’s. It’s not the oldest profession in the world for nothing. So the question is how best to deal with that. Locking people up for it has not worked. So the question for me at least are what are the alternatives. And I go to regulation and taxation to make a business that is not going anywhere as safe as possible.
Cook County Sheriff: More Than 100 Johns Cited Under New County Ordinance

USA Today: Your Say: 'Legal Prostitution Poses Problems'

Source:USA Today- sex shops in Amsterdam, Holland.

"Last week, Amnesty International joined other human rights groups calling for the decriminalization of prostitution to help ensure the safety of the people in the industry. Comments from Facebook are edited for clarity and grammar:" 

From USA Today

I look at prostitution the same way that I look at gambling, homosexuality, marijuana, alcohol, tobacco, and perhaps a few other things that come with real risks. These are not activities and things that I would personally get involved in, because they are not for me and the risks outweigh the rewards in my case. 

I look at personal choice issues exactly like that, which are for the people to make those decisions for themselves, instead of Big Government trying to run their lives for them. I also look as far as how they would affect me and society as a whole. 

Murder, rape, robbery and go down the line as far as activities I wouldn’t be personally involved in as far as the contributing party. Those things should be illegal, because you’re talking about crimes with real victims involved. The first group of activities whatever you think of them don’t have victims in them.

The reason why we have a prison population and criminal justice system that looks like something from the Eastern third world, is because we lock up so many people for non-violent victimless crimes. As well as sending people to prison when the offender and society would be better off if that person did their time in county jail, a halfway house, rehab, supervisory probation, or a combination of all of those things. 

Sure, there are real victims in the prostitution business itself and no one is denying that. Prostitutes, who aren’t healthy and spread disease to their customers who didn’t know the condition of the prostitute. And of course trafficking and abusive pimps. But their victims in all sorts of business’s legal and otherwise.

The debate is not whether prostitution is dangerous, or not and does it come with risks. The debate is what to do about it especially since we now have and overcrowded criminal justice system with a huge national debate and a budget deficit that looks like it can never be balanced anytime soon especially with the current makeup in Congress and current President. 

Prostitution, should be looked at the same way as the War on Drugs: legalizing and regulating marijuana and treating the addicts who are addicted to the hard narcotics. Legalize and regulate prostitution.

Force people who work in the business to be licensed and registered. Same thing with the customers and make sure everyone is healthy and gets medically checked and have to pass those medical tests in order to continue to work, or be a customer in the business. 

As well as show people in the business that they don’t have to do this and empower them to work in other professions. As well as encourage people to not become customers in the business. And make sure that customers and employees are paying taxes for what they’re making and consuming.

The criminal justice system should be for criminals. (Which should go without saying) People who intentionally hurt innocent people and hurt people in general and make their living by victimizing other people. Not people who are simply selling themselves to make a living. Where there’s a contract involved and that people get what they paid for and where everyone knows what’s coming going in. 

Prostitution, is not a good business and perhaps not a business that anyone should be involved in. Unless they’re uneducated and really only have their bodies that they can use to make a living. But that is different from locking people up simply for consensual sex, because there’s money involved.

Life & Liberty Magazine: Julie Borowski: Should Pro-Life People be Forced to Subsidize Planned Parenthood?

Source:The New Democrat

With all due respect to Julie Borowski over at Life and Liberty Magazine who I personally don’t know and just saw her name for the first time a couple of days ago, she poses a silly question about Planned Parenthood. If her question about whether pro-life people should be forced to subsidize Planned Parenthood is serious, than so are questions like should anti-death penalty advocates be forced to pay for the death penalty of convicted murderers. Or should anarchists, be forced to pay for law enforcement. Should pacifists be forced to pay for the military. Should isolationists and people who are against foreign aid be forced to pay for foreign aid. And I could go indefinitely. But don’t worry, because in the interest of time I won’t.

When you live in a liberal democracy especially the size of the United States where we pick our leaders by majority vote in most cases and when each of us only have one vote, you’re not always going to get who you voted for. Because sometimes your candidates the people you voted for don’t win. Which means the opposition comes to power and if they have the power to do what they want, or win some political battles perhaps through compromise, they will get to set policy. And that even means establishing policy and laws that others disapprove of. Whether it is continue to fund law foreign enforcement, fund foreign aid, continue the death penalty with taxpayer funds, continue to finance corporate welfare with taxpayer funds and yes continue to fund Planned Parenthood. Which does perform abortions, but without taxpayer funds.

This question about whether the pro-life community should be forced to fund Planned Parenthood with their taxes, sort of reminds me of the question that Libertarians and Conservative Libertarians like to pose about the safety net, or the so-called social contract. And they say why should they be forced to pay for something that they didn’t personally sign and approve of when it was passed. Well, again a country is a community we all have to play by the rules that the leadership who are hired by the people put in place. And if we don’t like the rules that are put in place we can always vote out if we have a majority support the leaders who enforce the rules. But to try to put out this argument that you don’t like the rules so you’re not going to follow them, is quite frankly silly.

Andrew Klavan & Bill Whittle: Should Prostitution be Legal?

Source:The New Democrat

I have a prediction. Prostitution, will become the next big freedom of choice and personal freedom issue in America. We already have a consensus on same-sex marriage, homosexuality and sexuality in general. As far as believing that this should be up to individual Americans to choose whether how they conduct themselves in their personal lives. And that gay marriage doesn’t affect straight marriage. We have a building consensus on marijuana, especially with young Americans who believe marijuana should be treated like alcohol and tobacco. Prostitution, will be next, at least with young Americans and Americans in general who are tired of seeing their high taxes go to funding the prison industrial complex.

Prostitution, like most personal freedom and personal choice issues, comes down to what should government be doing and how much choice and freedom should the individual have over their own lives. Big government statists on the Right and Left will say, “prostitution is dangerous. People get hurt, including the prostitutes with their pimps and everything else. It should always be illegal.” When you make something illegal, you at the very least are saying this is wrong. It should go away and should never be practiced. But what is the oldest profession in the world? Prostitution of course and its illegal in most of the United States. Just because you make something illegal, doesn’t mean it goes away. It just means that some people will be held criminally liable for doing it and getting caught.

So now that we know that, just because you make something that it is dangerous illegal, that doesn’t mean it won’t go away. The question is what should be done about it. And I’m glad to hear a self-described Libertarian like Andrew Klavan actually speak in favor of government regulation. Which segues into my next point. You legalize, regulate and tax prostitution, it still won’t go away. But that’s not my point. The idea is to acknowledge the obvious prostitution is here to stay. So knowing that again what should be done about it. And go to making it as safe as possible.

Registering prostitutes and their boss’s, whether that person is still called a pimp or not. But forcing them to get licensed to work at, manage, or own a prostitution business.

Forcing prostitutes to get medically checked on a regular basis. And requiring them to be healthy in order to work as a prostitute.

Instead of putting legal prostitutes away in jail and letting them out the next morning, crack down on abusive pimps, who beat up their women and steal their money and put them in prison.

Continue to use vice squads and under cover detectives to work the business. But not to arrest prostitutes and johns, but to make sure the employees in the business are acting responsibly and legally.

21 or over with at least a high school diploma at least, healthy and licensed to work in the business. 21 or over, licensed and healthy to be a customer in the business, as well.

Even with these regulations, prostitution is still here to stay. But now it can be as safe a business or profession as it possibly can. With the workers in the business able to make real good money and pay taxes on it. Which would be good for taxpayers, government budgets and the economy.

AlterNet: Valerie Tarico: 'I Am Pro-Abortion, Not Just Pro-Choice'

AlterNet: Opinion: Valerie Tarico: I Am Pro-Abortion, Not Just Pro-Choice

This post was originally posted at The New Democrat on WordPress

Reading this piece by Valerie Tarico, reminded me of a conversation that I was in about three years ago on Facebook of all places that was about abortion. And after I tell you about this conversation, you’ll know where my position is on abortion and choice when it comes to abortion. We were talking about abortion, obviously. But what made this discussion interesting was that we were both in favor of keeping and having abortion be legal. That the women should make the call when it comes to her own pregnancies.

But where we differ has to do with public financing of abortion. I’m against that, because I don’t believe taxpayers should be forced to finance someone else’s abortion. Especially if they view that as murder. Which I don’t, but only to save the life and health of the mother, or if she was raped. The person I was talking said that he supports public financing of abortion. But for fiscally conservative reasons. So taxpayers don’t have to support someone else’s kids that the parent or parents can’t support. He supports public funding of abortion to prevent low-income women from having additional babies while they’re still poor. I told this person that they sounded pro-abortion to me. And that I’m pro-choice, which is very different. The person said that they were pro-abortion.

As far as Valerie Tarico’s piece in the AlterNet. She compared abortion with knee surgery. She said she’s pro-abortion like she’s pro-knee surgery or supports chemotherapy or cataract surgery. Even though these procedures are completely different. To state the obvious and perhaps Valerie Tarico needs this stated. You don’t end pregnancies and future babies and children being born when you get a knee surgery, or get your eyes fixed. That’s what you do with an abortion. A women ends her pregnancy and as a result she’ll never have a baby from that pregnancy as a result. Unless the women was raped, she didn’t have to become pregnant in the first place. She chose for that to happen, along with the father together. And she can choose to end her pregnancy as well.

Pro-choice whatever the issue and freedom of choice just doesn’t cover abortion. So if you say you’re pro-choice on abortion and perhaps homosexuality, but you support big government and the state when it comes to marijuana and other drugs, perhaps even alcohol and tobacco and now sugar and salt, like with some paternalistic nanny statist Progressives today and add gambling and pornography and certain types of speech as well, your belief in freedom of choice is very limited. Really to just one or two issues, while you would have a big government there to stop people from making all sorts of other personal choices that you disapprove of. Even if they aren’t hurting anyone with what they are doing.

See, that’s the beauty of liberalism, liberty, liberation, liberalization, freedom in general. (Deal with it right-wingers) The ability for individuals to make their own decisions even if they’re making a decision that is potentially harmful, especially if they don’t know what they’re doing and others don’t approve of. But then also have to deal with the consequences of their choices. Including the financing of them, so we can’t pass the cost of our own decisions on to others, especially if those decisions are bad. But also so we aren’t financially endorsing bad decision-making in this country. And that is the difference from being pro-choice on multiple issues and publicly endorsing the decision-making of others.

Michelle Goldberg: 'Should Buying Sex Be Illegal?'

Source:The Nation- with an article about prostitution in Sweden.

Source:The New Democrat 

"The so-called “Swedish model” banning the purchase but not the sale of sex is catching on in Europe. But does it work? And for whom? 

Editor’s Note: Reporting for this article was funded by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. 

“Felicia Anna” is the nom de Internet of a 27-year-old Romanian prostitute who has worked in one of Amsterdam’s famed window brothels for the last four years. This spring, she launched a blog, Behind the Red Light District, and when I was in Amsterdam reporting on prostitution laws, a Dutch advocate for sex workers’ rights suggested I read it. Anna’s writing, the advocate said, would help me better understand the reality of legalized prostitution—a reality far removed from the lurid tales told by European anti-prostitution campaigners who seek to criminalize the purchase of sex. 

Written in English, Behind the Red Light District takes on what Anna sees as the myths propagated by the “rescue industry,” the confluence of radical feminists, conservative Christians and members of law enforcement who seek to save girls from sex trafficking. Legally, Anna would probably be considered a victim of trafficking herself. She had few prospects in Romania, she said, where she could expect to earn 200 euros a month at most. Some friends had promised to help her find a bar or restaurant job in Italy, but it never came through. Finally, at loose ends, she spoke to a couple—an Amsterdam-based sex worker and her boyfriend—who promised that she could make a lot of money as a prostitute in the Netherlands, which legalized pimping and brothel-keeping in 2000. They got Anna started, buying her plane ticket, putting her up in their apartment and helping to arrange the necessary paperwork. In exchange, Anna had to pay them back all the money they spent, “plus a little extra for all the effort they put into it,” she says. 

But this was not, Anna insists, an exploitative situation. The couple was kind to her, functioning more as a helpful employment agency than as underworld thugs. The work turned out to be remunerative, and the independence it provided was empowering. “I have a good live [sic], have enough money to do whatever I want to do, and have all the freedom in the world to do what I want, whenever I want to,” she wrote on her blog. 

Anna is scathing about the so-called “Swedish model” (also referred to as the “Nordic model”), an approach pioneered in Sweden that bans the buying but not the selling of sex. For the last few years, the Swedish model has been ascendant in Europe. Norway and Iceland adopted it in 2009, and Ireland and France are both considering it, though its future in the latter country is increasingly uncertain after a defeat in a French Senate committee in July. Earlier this year, the European Parliament voted in favor of a resolution calling for Swedish-style laws throughout the continent. Dutch advocates for sex workers’ rights fear that such laws could eventually come to their famously liberal country. The variant of feminism that backs the Swedish model, says Anna, is a “growing cancer for prostitutes.” 

I e-mailed Anna, and she agreed to meet early on a recent Friday evening at a cafe in central Amsterdam, where she arrived with her Dutch boyfriend in tow. Anna is slight and pretty, with dark hair pulled into a tight ponytail. Her eyes, slanting up above high cheekbones, are ringed with thick black liner, and her eyebrows are painted in a dramatic arch. Given the voice of her blog, I expect her to be tough and sarcastic, but she’s nothing of the sort. She smiles a lot when she speaks, in English that is more broken than on her blog. 

How, I ask her, did she become so interested in the politics of prostitution? “Because of my boyfriend,” Anna replies. “I think if I don’t have him, I would still be one of the girls who really doesn’t know what is happening.” 

Her boyfriend, who speaks excellent English, has longish brown hair and a hint of a mustache and goatee; he’s wearing a gold-colored chain around his neck and another around his wrist. He works in IT, he says, but never seems to make much money. He met Anna two years ago as a client; before they got together, he lived outside the city because he couldn’t afford an apartment in Amsterdam. Her earnings—about 300 to 400 euros per shift, which can run anywhere from four to ten hours—are more than five times as much as his. 

As we talk, it becomes clear that the voice of the blog is at least as much his as hers. In conversation, he compares the Swedish model to Prohibition in the United States, a point also made on Behind the Red Light District. And while the online Felicia Anna says she’s been endangered by a client only once, the Felicia Anna sitting across from me says she’s had to call the police two or three times. Nor does she feel that she can call for help every time a client gets aggressive and starts demanding his money back: “You can’t call always the police, because sometimes then you have to call almost the whole night.” Her boyfriend chimes in to compare it to working late at night at a bar. “You can also get drunk guys late at night,” he says. “You can also have problems with them.” 

When I mention that Behind the Red Light District sounds like him, Anna tells me: “He help me a lot with it, because I work in the nighttime and I have to sleep, too. And I have my own stuff that I have to do—cleaning the house, shopping, sometimes cooking. I can’t do everything by myself.”

Basically, her boyfriend adds, “she dictates what I have to write, and I kind of fill in, smooth out the story line... 

From The Nation 

"In this video, I talk about traveling to The Netherlands and Sweden to investigate the growing push for bans on the buying but not the selling of sex – sometimes called the Swedish model -- and describe my ambiguous conclusions.  Ultimately, I found that the Swedish model of prostitution law, currently ascendant in Europe and likely to be enacted in Canada, works, but at some cost to some of the women in sex work that it purports to help." 

Source:Pulitzer Center- left-wing columnist Michelle Goldberg

From the Pulitzer Center 

Just one quick point on the Swedish prostitution law: if women were being arrested for selling their sex, but men weren’t for buying the the women’s sex, radical feminists and the Far-Left would be freaking out over that and saying how sexist it was. And they would be right. (For a change)

What Sweden has done is to say it’s legal for women to sell their sex. But it’s illegal for men to buy their sex. Which is also sexist. If you want to have credibility, at least with people who aren’t already on your side, when it comes to sexism and bigotry in general, you have to play it straight. (No pun intended)

Here’s an example where radical-feminists (to use Michelle Goldberg’s label) as well as Christian Conservatives as well as nanny statists on the Left and Right disagree with me as a Liberal. I’m in favor of legalizing prostitution and let me make that clear. I’m not in favor of prostitution, but I’m in favor of allowing for people to make these decisions for themselves. I have decided that prostitution is not for me as a job or as a customer. Millions of other Americans in and outside of Nevada have decided that prostitution is for them as a worker or customer and have never spent a day in jail for it. And that is really my point. Who should decide, the individual or government?

There are plenty of things that I would never do because of potential dangerous risks that come from them. And most of them are legal:

like owning and using firearms

smoking tobacco

drinking alcohol

bungee jumping

gambling

homosexual sex

hardcore porn. And hardcore porn not so much because of any danger factor, but I don’t have much of a taste for it. Perhaps you need to be more lonely or lonely period to appreciate solid hardcore porn. But being that as it may there are plenty of dangerous activities that are actually legal in this country.

These vices (if you want to call them that) are legal because we’ve decided that there there’s a limit to what government can do to protect a country of three-hundred fifteen-million people. And that we need to limit those resources except for a few exceptions to doing the things that we need government to do. Like protecting us from predators foreign and domestic. (To use as an example)

I’m not saying prostitution is a good thing, but like a lot of these other activities it would be safer if it is legal than illegal. Because government can regulate it to protect people from predators and the workers, employers and customers can pay taxes on it.

What happens when you legalize prostitution? Now government can step in to regulate it to make it as safe as possible. Because legal or illegal prostitution is not the oldest profession in  the world for nothing. And it is only going to get older  so you might as well legalize it. So only adults are involved and customers and workers are tested on a regular basis to prevent the spread of disease. And so taxes are paid on it which and people don’t have to pay other people’s taxes that they are not paying because they are involved in a illegal profession.

Liberty Pen: Glen Beck & Andrew Napolitano- The Right To Be Left Alone

Source: Liberty Pen- 

Source: Liberty Pen: Glen Beck & Andrew Napolitano- The Right To Be Left Alone

The Right to be Left Alone is not an anti-government viewpoint. But this belief that free adults or free Americans are exactly that. That we own ourselves, our bodies and our minds. What we do with our own lives is exactly that. Our own lives and that we and only we should be held accountable for our own decisions. And where government comes in when it comes to personal and economic behavior as far as regulating is when we hurt innocent people. Whether we hurt them intentionally or unintentionally.

And as a country really since the Great Depression have moved away from that, or even go back to the Progressive Era of the early 1900s when Progressives believed that government needed to do more than that. That it couldn't just be there to protect our freedom. But to protect the general welfare of the country even if that meant restricting or even contracting individual freedom both personal and economic. So you get alcohol prohibition of the 1930s which inspired the Neoconservative War on Drugs in the 1970s. To today with big government paternalists believing government should prohibit what we can eat and drink and even smoke. Or what we can do in the privacy of our own homes.

When it comes to government in this fringe belief that government needs to protect people from themselves. And there are factions on both the Right and Left who believe in this, but believe government should protect us for different reasons. Paternalists on the Left so-called today's Progressives want to stop us from junk food and soft drinks. Paternalists on the Right want to tell us who we can marry, sleep with, when we can have sex and who we can marry.

Big government gone wild on both wings, but there are a growing number of Americans on both the Left and Right who believe big government is too much and are finally fighting back especially as it relates to privacy.

The Federalist: Fred Cole: Sometimes You Have To Question This Whole Freedom Thing

The Federalist: Opinion: Fred Cole: Sometimes You Have To Question This Whole Freedom Thing

I read both sides of the political spectrum, all the way from the far left to the libertarian right to the far right, and of course the center left, where I am, as well as the center right and anything else I might not have mentioned, so please do not get dizzy from reading this.  I'm sure people who read my blogs probably do not like that and perhaps wish I only read articles on the Left and probably wish I was a hell of a lot more partisan as a Democrat as well. I do this because I like to know what people are thinking, especially those who disagree with me, but it also helps me as a blogger to see what the rest of the political world is thinking about.

I mention this for a couple of reasons.  I am very liberal and do not want government controlling people's lives, and based on that, I see plenty of articles from the far left and far right about new ideas and proposals to control people. This year alone, I read three posts about Thom Hartmann wanting to repeal the Second Amendment, an article in the far left magazine Salon about nationalizing the news media because of the success of FOX News, and an article from the far right blog The American Thinker proposing to outlaw tobacco.  I am sure alcohol is not that far away either.

In 2012 alone, there were proposals from the Mike Bloombergs of the world (former mayor of New York City) arguing in favor of outlawing junk food and soft drinks.  The notion behind these proposals is that government (or a select few and elitist individuals) knows best how Americans should live, even Americans they've never met or heard of and know nothing about. These elitists know best because they are attended school in the Northeast or West Coast or Ivy League, and anyway, Americans are basically dumb and can't make these decisions for themselves.

Left or Right big government is too much government because it is government trying to control people and protect them from themselves, whether by prohibition of alcohol, food, and tobacco on the far left or outlawing pornography, premarital sex, adultery, abortion, and homosexuality on the far right. Being human is the ability to live, and part of that is about making mistakes, because, of course, none of us is perfect.  By then learning from those mistakes, we can do better the next time and not repeat them.

Personal freedom and responsibility as well as opportunity are what my politics and ideology are based on, and that means individuals have the freedom to control their own lives.  That means that property rights extend to people's own bodies and that we have the final say in what we do in life as adults as long as what we are doing is not hurting others. We are then held personally responsible, for good or bad, for our own decisions.

Mises Daily: Gary Galles: 'Labor Unions and Freedom of Association'

Source:Mises Daily- talking about organized labor.

"Mandatory union membership and mandatory dues imposed on those who do not want to join are again at issue. On the heels of contentious “right to work” disputes in several states, the Supreme Court has recently heard arguments challenging an Illinois mandate requiring home health care workers to pay representation fees to a union they did not want. That case, Harris v. Quinn, has the potential to even challenge the Court’s 1977 Aboud precedent upholding mandatory union dues for public sector workers. Such a result would be a victory for liberty.

Unions and their allies in Harris v. Quinn reiterate the claim, accepted in Aboud, that “union security” rules are needed to prevent workers from unfairly opting out of paying for union services. But that claim, which portrays the issue as defending the property, contract, and freedom of association rights of unions (to be paid for services rendered to workers they represent), intentionally misrepresents the core issue, which is the liberty of workers and employers.

“Union security” rules are clear violations of the liberty of workers’ and employers’ freedom to not be forced to associate with certain groups against their will, a freedom unions ironically steamroll in the name of freedom of association, asserted only for themselves, despite its inconsistency with freedom of association for all. Consequently, unions must find a legitimate sounding way of defending the coercion involved. That is where the free-rider argument comes in, which frames the issue as protecting legitimate rights, rather than the illegitimate use of government-granted coercive powers to impose employment terms violating government’s primary role: protecting individual rights." 

Source:Mises Daily

"Mulhall v. Unite Here decision will have a profound effect on employer neutrality, a union's ability to reach employees, and whether a union will be recognized by the employer during labor negotiations." 

Source:The Real News Network- talking about organized labor.

From so-called The Real News Network

Here's a perfect example of why I love being a Liberal. It is the perfect belief system for laying out the best plan in the fairest and most balanced way that protects everyone's freedoms. It is also a label under which so-called free market economic Libertarians, and pro-big labor Socialists should be able to find common ground when it comes to Freedom of Assembly and the Right to Organize, which give all workers the freedom of choice they deserve and need.

There are people, let's say, on the far-left who do not so much believe in the Right to Organize but would like to see it mandated, and all work places, both private and public, unionized, requiring union membership of all workers, with a non-participation penalty of paying union dues whether or not they are members. Then you have the so-called Libertarian-Right, which demands that unions be abolished and the market (meaning employers) decide what all workers get paid. They also would eliminate most, if not all, regulations, including the minimum wage.

But if you are an actual Progressive and not just someone who calls yourself a Progressive, then the Right to Organize is real, meaning that it should be a right and not a mandate for workers to join or not join a union.  

If you are a real Libertarian and not just someone who calls yourself a Libertarian or a Conservative Libertarian, you don't want government power or corporate or business power deciding for individuals whether they should sign up for a union because you believe in the individual and freedom of choice and not government or employers making these decisions for the individual instead.

Now here is where the common ground can be found for actual Progressives and Libertarians, that is, let the workers decide for themselves whether to sign up for a union and let people unionize if they want but then have the union earn its union membership and members, including dues, and not let them be automatically rewarded just because they are a union. 

And if workers do not sign up for the union, then they do not pay union dues and do not get the benefits of being union members.  They work as free agents, negotiating their own wages and benefits. Both sides win. Big government and big business get out of the way.  Individuals decide for themselves. 

You can also see this post at FreeState Now, on Blogger.

Take Part Live: 'Will Legalizing Prostitution Stop Sex Trafficking?'

Source:Take Part Live- talking about prostitution.

"American entrepreneur and brothel owner Dennis Hof makes an argument for decriminalizing prostitution. Special guest host Ana Kasparian of The Young Turks joins us as well!

Moonlite bunny ranch owner Dennis Hof legally operates a brothel in Nevada. With a strict screening process, safety precautions, security cameras, Dennis makes a case for taking the sex industry out of the dark and adding regulations to curb HIV transmission and sex trafficking. 

Also, sex worker Ava Adora chimes in with her support of the industry and even refers to the brothel as simply "a singles bar with amazing odds." 

You can always watch the most recent FULL EPISODE at:Take Part Live." 

From Take Part Live 

This is a tough issue for me and certainly not an issue at the start of my day I was expecting to blog about. Because we are talking about a very dangerous business whether it is legal or not. And prostitution will always be a business in America illegal or otherwise. 

Prostitution is not the oldest profession in the world for nothing. Dangerous business, but then you also have the side that I tend to fall down on as a Liberal that we are talking about what adults do with their own lives both personal and economic lives. Who should make that call the state meaning government or the individual.

I look at prostitution similar to how I look at illegal narcotics and gambling: how many people do we really want to arrest and lock up for what they do with their own personal lives. This is not a profession that is going to go away there will always be a market for it. That is just type of country we’ve always been and will always be and if anything it will just grow. Because again of how liberal and libertarian we are becoming as a country.

Again, I look at prostitution the way I look at gambling and marijuana.

1. Legalize it and then tax it and regulate it to make it as safe as possible. Regulate prostitution like alcohol. Twenty-one or over to work in the profession or be a customer in it.

2. Require workers and customers to be licensed by the state they work in.

3. Random medical tests for customers and workers to make sure they are healthy and not spreading diseases.

4. Tax profits made by workers and companies in this business. And tax the customers for what they pay for these services.

That is just how I view government that it is not the job for government to protect us from ourselves. But to protect innocent people from predators who would hurt us. And to make the activities that we choose in life as safe as possible through smart commonsense regulations.

You can also see this post at Real Life Journal, on Blogger.